Long Cruise onboard U.S.S. CONSTITUTION

Serious
Sea Duty - And Commitment to a Cause

The
following tale is from the history of the oldest commissioned Warship in the
world, the USS Constitution. It comes by way of the National Park Service,
as printed in "Oceanographic Ships, Fore and Aft", a periodical
from the oceanographer of the US Navy.

On
23 August 1779, the USS Constitution set sail from Boston, loaded With 475
officers and men, 48,600 gallons of water, 74,000 cannon shot, 11,500 pounds
of black powder and 79,400 gallons of rum. Her mission: to destroy and
harass English shipping.

On
6 October, she made Jamaica, took on 826 pounds of flour and 68,300 gallons
of rum. Three weeks later, Constitution reached the Azores, where she
provisioned with 550 pounds of beef and 2,300 gallons of Portuguese wine.

On
18 November, she set sail for England where her crew captured and scuttled
12 English merchant vessels and took aboard their rum. By this time,
Constitution had run out of shot. Nevertheless, she made her way unarmed up
the Firth of Clyde for a night raid. Here, her landing party captured a
whiskey distillery, transferred 13,000 gallons aboard and headed for home.

On
20 February 1780, the Constitution arrived in Boston with no Cannon shot, no
food, no powder, no rum and no whiskey. She did, however, still carry her
crew of 475 officers and men and 18,600 gallons of water.

The
math is quite enlightening: Length of cruise: 181 days. Booze consumption:
1.26 gallons per man per day (this does NOT include the unknown quantify of
rum captured from the 12 English merchant vessels in November).

Naval
historians say that the re-enlistment rate from this cruise was 92%.